Seven years ago, it would have qualified as a Winter Meetings splash.
But Jason Heyward has fallen far from the day he signed an eight-year, $184 million contract with the Chicago Cubs in December 2015. He was released by the Cubs this fall, his contributions having dropped so much the Cubs were willing to swallow his $22 million salary for 2023.
Instead, the 33-year-old Heyward signed a minor-league contract with the Dodgers on Thursday and will try to make the team on a non-roster spring training invitation.
The move is a low-cost one for the Dodgers, who will pay Heyward only the minimum salary with the Cubs still paying the rest of his $22 million salary next year. Heyward will compete for a spot on the Dodgers’ bench as a left-handed bat in an outfield group that tilts to the right – Mookie Betts, Chris Taylor and Trayce Thompson are all right-handed, with only rookie James Outman a lefty.
At least one Dodger was excited by Thursday’s signing. Freddie Freeman came up through the Atlanta Braves’ system with Heyward and posted a photo to Instagram of them together in the dugout as 19-year-old teammates with the Class-A Myrtle Beach Pelicans and captioned it “Together Again!”
Heyward (first round) and Freeman (second) were the Braves’ top two draft picks in 2007.
A year after that season in Class-A, Heyward was an everyday player for the Braves, making the All-Star team and finishing second behind Buster Posey in the voting for the 2010 NL Rookie of the Year. Heyward hit .277 with 18 home runs and an .849 OPS that year.
Heyward never quite lived up to that early promise. He did win five Gold Gloves for his defensive skills, which have since diminished, but posted an .800 OPS just twice in the 12 seasons that followed (one of those during the shortened 2020 season).
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Heyward was traded to the Cardinals for one season in 2015 – with another Dodgers’ reclamation signing, right-hander Shelby Miller, going to the Braves – before going into free agency and signing that multi-year deal with the Cubs. It soon came to be an oft-cited example of a free-agency blunder.
In seven years with the Cubs, Heyward hit .245 with a .700 OPS and managed a dozen home runs just once (21 in 2019). But he will be remembered in Chicago sports lore for his clubhouse speech during a rain delay in the midst of the Cubs’ Game 7 victory in the 2016 World Series, ending the Cubs’ 108-year championship drought.